Somalia: ICRC resumes food distribution in Jilib after air strike

01-11-2011 News Release 11/221

Geneva/Nairobi (ICRC) – The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has resumed its distribution of food to over 6,000 displaced people in a camp in Jilib district.

The distribution, which is being carried out in cooperation with the Somali Red Crescent Society, was temporarily suspended following an air raid on 30 October that left a number of people in the camp killed or wounded.

"The ICRC and the Somali Red Crescent remind all parties to the conflict of their obligation to spare the civilian population," said Pascal Mauchle, head of the ICRC delegation for Somalia in Nairobi. "All feasible precautions must be taken to avoid, and in any event to minimize, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects. Humanitarian relief personnel must also be respected and protected."

In the aftermath of the raid, Somali Red Crescent volunteers administered first aid to the wounded and helped transfer them to medical facilities outside the camp. The ICRC provided the facilities with medicines and other supplies needed to treat the wounded.

The food distribution in Jilib is part of a large emergency operation currently being carried out by the ICRC with the aim of assisting some 1.1 million drought- and war-affected people across the hardest-hit areas of southern and central Somalia.